Immodest Proposals

Posted on by Frank Brinkley

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin of English parents and sent to school in Kilkenny. He went on to Trinity College, Dublin, where his career was undistinguished, and then joined the household of the diplomat Sir William Temple. There are mysteries about his life and career, which are compounded by his own love of mystification. […]

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Naked & Read

Posted on by Frank Brinkley

It seems to be the season of ‘double lives’. I have on my desk galleys of The Double Life of Paul de Man, the reader-proof doyen of deconstruction who began his career in Belgium during the Second World War writing newspaper articles sympathetic to the Nazi cause. That was an aspect of his literary production […]

Yours Unfaithfully

Posted on by David Gelber

Isherwood completists will pounce on The Animals, the collected correspondence between the English author and Don Bachardy, his three-decades-younger American artist boyfriend. It follows the publication in four volumes of Isherwood’s unabridged diaries, each carefully edited by Katherine Bucknell and encouraged by Bachardy, now approaching eighty and still working. The most recent volume of the […]

All Beat Up

Posted on by David Gelber

‘I think that William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius’ – Norman Mailer. ‘Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift’ – Jack Kerouac. ‘Burroughs has, principally, two claims on the attention of serious readers: as a moralist, and as an innovator. On both counts, it […]

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